The Ninja Master

This story was originally posted to alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo, a group
that consists of stories of a dystopia of high tech and street violence based
on William Gibson's novel "Neuromancer"....

"I see a fat man with a white beard lying in the alley, tiny reindeer
chewing at his corpse. I see a dead reindeer, rats tearing at its flesh. I
see a dead rat, maggots crawling over it. I see a maggot that is looking a bit
under the weather.

"I see the stringy sinews of the gleaming pus from the running sore
of Christmas...."

The carol continued to play on the televid monitor on the wall above
the bar. For hours the visuals had consisted only of a log burning in a
fireplace, but the fire had gotten out of control and spread into the studio,
engulfing the video equipment.

A man with a long black ponytail and soft black clothing sat at the
bar. His name was Soo Ni Buffalo. He was of Japanese and Native American
origin, a heritage that bequeathed to him extraordinary quickness, agility, and
balance. At a large public university in upstate New York, he had become
expert in the ancient art of hand combat, Kung Pow. Such was his mastery that
he was chosen to wear the outfit of his school's mascot, the Kung Pow Chicken.

Soo Ni Buffalo had taken the path of Kung Pow, a weaponless art. His
brother Soo Ni Stony Brook chose to study the new technologies of combat. He
had once created the ultimate adhesive, but he couldn't get it out of the
bottle. Then he created a monofilament strand of diamond so strong and yet so
thin that it could cut through any substance when a very slight pressure was
applied. Unfortunately, the weight of the monofilament strand was enough to
create a very slight downward pressure, so the strand cut through the table,
the floor, the foundation, and the bedrock. As far as anyone knew, the strand
was still oscillating about the gravitational center of the earth. Soo Ni
Buffalo eschewed his brother's gadgetry in favor of instinctive human ability.

On the monitor, he watched fire destroy the video studio until the
visual signal turned to static. Then he pressed a button on a hand-held
transmitter, which emitted a small burst of radio waves. The burst was picked
up by one of the many transceivers of the I'veFallenAndICan'tGetUpNet, sent up
to their comsat, bounced off their lunar repeater installation, boosted down
to the Very Very Very Large Antenna Array, and relayed to the monitor that
Soo Ni Buffalo was watching, where it caused the channel to change.

The monitor now showed a man in a gray suit and ceramic hair, speaking
to the camera.

"And finally, we happened to notice this story: Even in this day and
age, some people still do something the old-fashioned way.

"To recap tonight's top story: Events transpire."

While Soo Ni Buffalo watched the monitor, two hyped-up street-hardened
razorboys came up behind him. Their arms and legs were padded by heavy slabs
of black rubber armored underneath by steel belts. The slabs were embedded
with metal studs and had angry angular patterns like long lightning bolts
gouged deeply into their surface. Chains had been strapped to the surface of
the slabs.

Soo Ni Buffalo's 360-degree peripheral vision warned of the two figures
behind him, and he turned to them slowly. He recognized the uniform of
The Radials, a tough gang that lives on the street.

One razorboy screamed, "Change the channel back."

Soo Ni murmured evenly, "The previous channel had no picture. It was
only snow."

The razorboys growled, "We like snow!"

Then they went for it. They made their play. They made their move.
They stepped over the line. They tossed the dice. They cast the die. They
cast two dice, and then tossed them. There was no turning back now.

One fighter leaped at Soo Ni. He ducked, and the attacker jumped over
him. He sailed over the bar and into a rack of bottles, where the broken glass
caused severe tire damage.

The remaining fighter charged. Soo Ni could have ducked again, but
then no lesson would have been taught. He blocked the weapon away, reached
into the attacker's mouth, pulled out his heart, stuffed it with cheese, put it
back, and watched him die of arteriosclerosis before he could make another
move.

Soo Ni Buffalo remounted his bar stool. The room was silent except for
the audiovisual monitor.